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Show HN: Slow Social, a social network built for friends, not influencers

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Re: Show HN: Slow Social, a social network built for friends, not influencers

#301

Post by _zzaw »

simonjgreen wrote: post #296
CitrusFruits wrote: post #9

Hey everyone, OP here. I, like many others tend to waffle between loving and hating social media, so this is my take on what I think a better solution looks like. This is something I've been working on for the past couple of months and a concept that I think will be though provoking, if nothing else, to the HN community. If you want to read more on my thoughts and the story behind this, you can check out my blog post…

Does the .us TLD mean you are only interested in US users?

I’m guessing it’s “us” as in “something for all of us.”

Re: Show HN: Slow Social, a social network built for friends, not influencers

#302

Post by vhiremath4 »

unkulunkulu wrote: post #300

From article by the op: > …products owned by publicly traded companies who have a legally binding responsibility to maximize financial return on investment to their shareholders. Can someone enlighten me to this particular detail? How come legally? I believed it was free market?

board members of publicly traded companies have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders to make decisions that maximize shareholder value

Re: Show HN: Slow Social, a social network built for friends, not influencers

#303

Post by [deleted] »

skoczko wrote: post #293

Constrained social networks don't work, look at Google+. You don't need a social network to stay in touch with your friends and family as messaging apps and e-mail fulfil that purpose completely. Algorithms are not the only reason why all social networks drift towards celebrity/influencer/news following -- they are channels for consuming media, the "social" is in the name only.

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Slow Social, a social network built for friends, not influencers

#305

Post by spullara »

javajosh wrote: post #212
CitrusFruits wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't plan on sharing personal information with any sort of entity, certainly not for profit. But, the personal information is stored on machines and manipulated by other companies, namely Supabase and SendGrid since its necessary for the site to function.

It's admirable that you're aware of the risk you're placing on your users, and willing to assuage them. If you're audience is HN, you might want to simply list the 3rd party runtime components you're using (and to go one better, review their privacy notices, recursively -- I can imagine a malefactor doing a backroom deal with a component provider to get kickbacks on data being shared down the line.) I would also incl…

For it to be available in EU at all I think they will have to list all of them anyway.

Re: Show HN: Slow Social, a social network built for friends, not influencers

#306

Post by movedx »

Oooooh! So it's like email, but worse? Worse because:

It doesn't scale to infinity like email does.

Someone else centralises the data and you have to trust them to keep it safe. Email doesn't have this problem because I can take my emails elsewhere and/or change my address, something I've done plenty of times.

You don't know what they're doing with the data and you don't now who can access it. The same applies with email, except I know who Google are and I know they're "reading" it. I accept this cost. I don't know who "Slow Social" are.

It's a whole new system for elderly (and even not-so-elderly) relatives to get to grips with. They get email today. They use email right now.

It's another website that needs another login for my mum to remember, except she'll just use the same password again (and again), until one day it's breached.

I think growth, innovation, and ideas are important, but I also wish we'd focus on building on and improving the systems we already have.

So I guess I have to ask: why not (better) email? Why not a new email system that's interoperable with the existing system, but offers a better UI focused on sharing stories with each other?

Re: Show HN: Slow Social, a social network built for friends, not influencers

#307

Post by ivan_gammel »

pjerem wrote: post #162
CitrusFruits wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, that's a good tip! I'll definitely check them out. And yup, definitely a concern. Makes me think that perhaps there's a possibility to not cap the posts, but rather have any posts outside of the first one in a week have something like a "secondary" tag. Then again, you might run into the problem that Instagram has where everyone stopped posting as soon as stories caught on. Alas, it's a tricky problem.

Why not just allow your users to write their weekly post during all the week (and saving it while not publishing it) but just allowing to publish once a week ? In doing so, there would be no real scarcity for the writer (the post can be edited to the infinity) and you encourage writing long prose. Your UX should show that editing the post is the default option and publishing it should be some ritual (maybe send a not…

I just tested, it works exactly this way. You start editing and do it over time until you publish it. It is not obvious from UX though.

Re: Show HN: Slow Social, a social network built for friends, not influencers

#308

Post by _zzaw »

gmanis wrote: post #276

OP, you should charge users a small amount ($24-50 a year), after a trial period. Keep it simple, free of ads and keep the timeline algorithm free. I’m sure there are many who would love something like this and be willing to pay enough to cover costs and maybe generate a full time income for you. Good luck!!

I wouldn’t pay that much for what this is. I’m sure most of my friends wouldn’t. It’s a neat enough idea that I’d try the free tier, but it doesn’t offer anything compelling enough to make me want to pay for it. I’m not trying to be mean or dismissive; it’s a genuinely cool experiment, and I’d honestly love to see a social network where people actually said longer substantive things rather than low-effort shitposts (or, more and more, just sharing somebody else’s low-effort shitposts).

I don’t like the idea that people can’t see my earlier writings. That’s important to me, especially if I don’t share stuff often and I put effort into it. I don’t see the benefit in hiding that from my friends.

What I’m looking for these days is actual community, conversation, and connection. I think the effortless posting on Facebook/Twitter encourages kneejerk garbage (and blogs, sadly, have fallen into decline) so I really like the more “slow down and make something meaningful” philosophy here. If you can turn that into an actual community—one that offers something Reddit doesn’t—I’d pay for that.

Re: Show HN: Slow Social, a social network built for friends, not influencers

#309

Post by deltille »

NanoWar wrote: post #123

Missed opportunity to call it "Slowcial" ;)

I had the same thought and had been holding my tongue. I think the more literal name probably suits the intent of the service better but my impulse to terrible portmanteau is screaming. :)

Re: Show HN: Slow Social, a social network built for friends, not influencers

#310

Post by TulliusCicero »

CitrusFruits wrote: post #9

Hey everyone, OP here. I, like many others tend to waffle between loving and hating social media, so this is my take on what I think a better solution looks like. This is something I've been working on for the past couple of months and a concept that I think will be though provoking, if nothing else, to the HN community. If you want to read more on my thoughts and the story behind this, you can check out my blog post…

I think your general vibe is good here, but I don't think you need the posting limit, necessarily. Compared to Facebook, to make it less about re-sharing spam and the like, and more like a conversation, what you need is:

* More emphasis on text (which you already have, great)

* Less emphasis on photos. I hate how when you create a post on FB with a lot of text and photos, photos get much more space within the post layout, it should be reversed if you want a conversation, and if people want to see a bigger version they can always click them to blow them up.

* Links aren't treated as special. You can include them in your posts and people can click them, but they shouldn't result in including a photo+description on the post.

* No sharing other people's posts. You can copy+paste and link to their post (which will only work for other friends of them), but no re-sharing.

Especially those last two mean that you don't get the 'spam' of people sharing content from other people or websites.

Anyway, overall great job, this is definitely something I wanna see. Facebook is full of news spam/hot takes and the like, Instagram is largely just photos and videos, I really want something that's focused on what my immediate friends and families wanna talk about (not just share photos of).

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